Scars
by KingOfJacks
Summary: It was always that cheek he cupped when he held her face. It was always that cheek he kissed in goodbye or hello. It was always that cheek he pressed his face against when taking a picture beside her. A sequel to "Tattoos", although it's not necessary to read that story to understand this one.


Scars had always been a point of contention for Harry.

He could not recall a day in his life where he had not seen them in the mirror or felt them when he stretched his skin oddly. They alighted on his hands and arms, pinpricks of white or garish lines of raw, pink skin. A puckered hole, never fully healed from the pierce of a Basilisk fang. The craggy line left behind by Wormtail's dagger that still burned ever so slightly hotter than the rest of his body. And, of course, the eponymous scar upon his forehead, from which the entirety of the Wizarding World derived their understanding of his existence.

He hated them all. He did not see in them the memories of the lives he'd saved or the ordeals he'd survived. He saw, instead, the lives he'd lost in foolish crusades that ought to have been the responsibility of wizards and witches far older than himself. He saw instead the traumas that continued to plague him to this day. His parents on his forehead. Cedric on his arm. The Dursleys and their mistreatment pinpricked halfway to his elbow - grease burns that had nested in his skin as a young boy who hadn't yet understood how to work a frying pan. Umbridge's torture scrawled in his own handwriting across the back of his hand. Even Lockhart, the pathetic fool - his life ruined by his own design because of Harry's intervention. He could see his dopy smiling face sitting upon a bed at St. Mungo's every time he saw the Basilisk scar on his arm. Harry hated his scars.

But he would admit to some hypocrisy. He was absolutely fascinated with Daphne's.

They were slight, miniscule lines of white that at times were almost invisible against her porcelain skin, but oh so very visible at others. There were eight in all, marring - in her own words - her otherwise beautiful face. They were scrawled across her left cheek, just below her eye. Harry thought he could still see that eye twitching at some phantom memory of the pain that had scarred her for life. Daphne despised them. Harry worshipped them.

He hadn't been there when she'd gotten them, or she wouldn't have them, but he would admit that every time he looked at them, he fell all the more in love with her. His year absent from Hogwarts had been difficult for many students, but for none more than those Slytherins who did not agree with the regime. Daphne had been one of those, and had portrayed her own subtle defiance. Of course, for a Slytherin, subtle defiance was as loud as open rebellion. So she had been punished each time.

A single line - a tally mark - upon her cheek for every defiance. A cluster of five alighted brightly under her eye any time she blushed or tanned her skin, the remaining three petering off down her cheek, angled towards her nose. She had been to healer after healer after healer to no avail. The knife had been cursed, and the scars would remain all the length of her life. She had been told to be thankful - it could have been far worse. Some days she was. Other days, Harry had to be thankful for her.

It was always that cheek he cupped when he held her face. It was always that cheek he kissed in goodbye or hello. It was always that cheek he pressed his face against when taking a picture beside her. And, in truth, many never noticed the lines of white. Those that did didn't comment. Nevermind that Harry Potter was a very defensive husband - they knew what those lines meant. Some had even had the guts to thank her, an interaction she was never prepared for.

There were times, when they were alone and she was crying, that she had tried to thank him for these little moments which added up to such an enormous whole. He had never accepted.

"There's nothing to thank me for," Harry would smile broadly, cupping her cheek.

She would smile back as genuinely as she could, kissing his hand with grateful tears.


End file.
